Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on tokenizing stocks, expanding access to private shares, fintech's future

**Vlad Tenev** (0:01)
I am Vlad Tenev, the founder of Robinhood.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:07)
We're talking about Robinhood.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:08)
The stock's more than doubled since its last report.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:10)
Its stock surged 180 percent this year after nearly doubling in 2024

**SPEAKER_3** (0:16)
Shares of the trading platform now up more than 400 percent in the last year.

**Vlad Tenev** (0:20)
Vlad, your presence there speaks volumes.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:22)
Robinhood Gold, which hit a record 3.5 million subscribers.

**Vlad Tenev** (0:26)
Most financial services get worse the more money you have, but we wanted to kind of invert that.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:32)
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Robinhood CEO, Vlad Tenev.

**Chamath** (0:47)
Hi, good to see you, brother.

**Vlad Tenev** (0:49)
Chamath, good to see you.

**Jason** (0:51)
Here's to the reason Jay Cal's here.

**Chamath** (0:55)
I mean, it is a great story.

**Friedberg** (0:57)
It's so true. Jay Cal bumbles into eight shares of Robinhood. Vlad builds $100 billion company, it's unbelievable.

**Chamath** (1:04)
I mean, people know me for the Uber investment, which is a $4 or $5 million valuation, but there's a-

**Vlad Tenev** (1:10)
When do I flip that?

**Chamath** (1:12)
Well, yeah, it's gonna take a little more. I think you got 20 acts left to go, but-

**David Sacks** (1:16)
Wait, was Jay Cal the third or fourth investor in Robinhood?

**Chamath** (1:19)
It was $20 million valuation, but it's a good story I think because you hadn't launched and we're at Antonio's Nut House. I went for a drink with my friend Adeo. He brought his college roommate, Elon. We're hanging out at Antonio's Nut House in Palo Alto. Rest in peace, Antonio's.

**Friedberg** (1:34)
Oh, they should keep dropping these names one second here.

**Chamath** (1:36)
So Vlad comes over and we- Vlad and I knew each other a little bit and Vlad pitches me on this idea and he says, I'm a quant. I said, what's a quant? He said, quantitative analysis. I said, yeah, I heard of it. Hit me with the idea. And then he goes, is that Elon Musk? I said, yeah, just hit me with the idea. I know you got a startup. He says, well, I want to get this generation, these millennials, these Gen Zs, I want to get them to trade stocks. I said, love it. They don't care about like getting a driver's license. They don't, they're still on their mom and dad's Netflix. You're going to try to get people who don't care about the future to trade stocks. He says, yeah. I said, what's the business model? He said, that's the best part. We're going to let him trade for free. So I said, okay, let me repeat this back to you, kid. You want to get a group of people who don't have any interest in the future to trade stocks. And then we have 30 seconds left. You're going to make money, you're going to make money.

**Jason** (2:32)
Thank you, Vlad.

**Chamath** (2:34)
I said, I'm in, I'm in.

**Vlad Tenev** (2:36)
Not only that, but he said, this is probably the best idea you'll ever have.

**Chamath** (2:41)
I did say that to him too. I was like, this is the best idea. What if it works? And here we are 10 years later, what's worked?

**Friedberg** (2:47)
And last week, you were out at the S&P 500

**Vlad Tenev** (2:49)
I was.

**Friedberg** (2:50)
Last week or yesterday, two days ago.

**Vlad Tenev** (2:51)
It was Friday.

**Friedberg** (2:52)
I mean, what a huge accomplishment.

**Vlad Tenev** (2:54)
Thank you.

**Jason** (2:55)
I mean, I think it was because I rejected you for a job, right?

**Vlad Tenev** (2:58)
You heard about that.

**Jason** (2:59)
This is a tale of true stories.

**Vlad Tenev** (3:01)
Thank you guys for upgrading me, by the way. I guess that's been the best part of being added to the S&P, going from just a Jason interview to the whole squad here.

**Jason** (3:09)
We were doing the rehearsal yesterday, and everyone wanted to do the interview, so we said, let's all get it together.

**Chamath** (3:13)
Yeah, I said, why don't we all get in here?

**Friedberg** (3:15)
Let's maybe start. So look, you've built an incredible business. There's a part of it that looks like the, you know, what comes after the E-trades of the world, et cetera, but there's an enormous other part of your business, and there's all these emergent paths. I want to just start by double clicking in something that you announced a few months ago in France. And maybe you want to talk us through it, what the goal was. You got a lot of support, but you got a lot of blowback as well. There was a lot of people that were like, wow, this is a little too disruptive, tokenizing these stocks, putting them on the blockchain. Maybe talk us through the business, and then just double click on that narrow thing so we can understand what you're up to.